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Catching Up With Blake Schwarzenbach’s forgetters

November 17, 2009

Generation Records finally got around to posting live footage from a late October post-CMJ show they hosted for forgetters, the reclusive Brooklyn trio fronted by Blake Schwarzenbach, whose days in Jawbreaker seem much closer, lately, than those he spent playing in Jets to Brazil. If they wanted to, probably, forgetters (yup, drop the “f”) could be a “supergroup”– drummer Kevin Mahon played in the first Against Me! lineup, and bassist Caroline Paquita was in Bitchin’–but mostly they keep a low profile, not unlike Thorns of Life, the band Schwarzenbach performed with a few times last year before falling out with ToL’s drummer, Aaron Cometbus. Most people found out about that band the day they broke up. Which who knows, maybe forgetters have as well at this point–it’s been a nearly month since they updated their blog or played a show. Thorns of Life were ultimately memorialized by a good quality Gilman Street bootleg that preserved nearly every song they’d ever wrote; forgetters don’t seem to have even that yet, but it’s possible, with some digging, to put together the nine or ten tracks the new band’s played live. The above song was called “Not a Track Bike” when it was a Thorns of Life tune. “Black Art” also survived the change of name/personnel:

Featuring one of the best random Schwarzenbach lyrics in forever: “Hari-kari with a Smith-Corona/What the fuck?!” (“That’s about Mishima, that song,” he told City Sound Inertia. “It’s about writers, the verse is about Mishima committing ritual suicide.”)

“Oh Deadly Death”–another Thorns of Life carryover.

“Not Funny,” described as “the story of an Afghan village girl torn between her love for her soldier, and her father.” Much better sounding version of this song here.

“Vampire Lessons.” Our favorite of the new forgetters songs.

This song is called “Helicopter vs. Rabbit.”

“Not Immune.” Thanks to YouTube user dlocanejr, by the way, for shooting most of these videos.

“1982 Interdiction.”

Our other favorite forgetters song. Basically mid-period heartrended Jawbreaker. No idea what the song is called though. Update: “Too Small.”

Not a forgetters song, but the jam nonetheless. It has not, seemingly, survived the changeover. For that we mourn.